Digital servitization in BtoB manufacturing systems. Combining theory and practice for competitiveness enhancement

In the current markets characterized by higher complexities digital servitization could sustain industrial organizations to actualize innovation opportunities, thereby enhancing their competitiveness. However digital servitization engenders a structural, behavioral, and cultural transformation of industrial organizations, bringing customer centricity and digitalization in services’ design and delivery. By proposing a strategic conceptualization of value co-creation, the work lies the theoretical foundations for a system approach as a key to understand how digital servitization can enable and foster industrial organizations to create new value and innovation in BtoB markets. Then, the work aims at offering a reinterpretation of digital servitization, based on a better understanding of those most critical managerial issues that the extant research underestimated. At this end, combining the most recent advancements of S-D logic and Viable System Approach a holistic framework is advanced to detect the strategic management of the technology-enabled shift from a product-centric to a service-centric logic, also identifying the socio-technical dynamics and the underlying viable mechanisms leading to a digitized value creation. From a practical standpoint, an empirical investigation aimed to activate the digital servitization framework is proposed. At managerial level, the study offers insights on relevant factors able to support the decision- making process for successfully shape a viable digital ecosystem within industrial markets by enhancing the value generated through the emergence of different kinds of innovations.